Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1962: two students meet one autumn evening during their senior year at Harvard--Ed, a Jewish kid on scholarship, and Hugh, a Boston Brahmin with the world at his feet. Ed is unapologetically ambitious and girl-crazy, while Hugh is ambivalent about everything aside from his dedicated pining for the one girl he's ever loved. An immediate, intense friendship is sparked that night between these two opposites, which ends just as abruptly, several years later, although only one of them understands why. A Dual Inheritance follows the lives of Ed and Hugh for next several decades, as their paths--in spite of their rift, in spite of their wildly different social classes, personalities and choices--remain strangely and compellingly connected.